Flipping Pages: Using Moleskine as Medium

A new book showcases artists, writers, architects, and designers who turn blank journals into works of art

By coating warped pages in colorful resins and fanning them out in the shape of a pumpkin, American artist Cristina Lei Rodriguez transformed a standard Moleskine notebook into a whimsical, rainbow-hued sculpture. The piece is her contribution to The Detour Book, published by the Milan-based notebook company, which compiles images of journals-turned-artworks by dozens of international artists, architects, musicians, writers, and designers.

Cristina Lei Rodriguez’s multicolor sculpture.

COURTESY MOLESKINE

Another playful submission comes from Turkish architecture firm Atelye70, who constructed a sleek, three-dimensional, Renzo Piano–inspired model of a “Moleskine Museum”—it even includes small-scale museum patrons. Tom Sachs took a more traditional approach to the project, fashioning a hefty chained-and-padlocked diary titled Tom Sachs Secrets 2007.

A “Moleskine Museum” model designed by Atelye70.

COURTESY MOLESKINE

While many participants added on to the original structure of the notebook, others cut, burned, or otherwise attempted to destroy theirs. Italian artist Loredana Longo rigged a makeshift bomb to her Moleskine, charring the photos and notes inside, and Singapore-based artist Ana Prvacki photographed herself lighting her pages on fire as part of a performance piece.

Of course, the blank sheets of a notebook are meant to be written on—the contributors to this project simply took their markings a step further. As Raffaella Guidobono, a longtime creative consultant for Moleskine, says in The Detour Book, “Each time you work with paper, you are automatically upcycling it.”

Fashion designer Christian Lacroix created colorful collages in his notebook.

An enjoyable read indeed. And while the above works are more intricate, they do remind me of http://www.sketchbookproject.com. That said, it would seem that the content of Sketchbook Project works is usually more hidden, figuratively and literally.